Hello, Friends. How are you? How was your week? Anything fun on your schedule? This weekend, we’re looking forward to some birthdays and a Gather for Goats dinner to attend. If the weather holds up, I will also be perfectly happy to work in the yard every moment I can and eat nothing but popsicles. Hah!

Before I head to the grocery store so I can fill my freezer with creamsicles, here are a few things I’ve wanted to share:

– De-stress your college application experience. I was interviewed about how we did it on the Edit Your Life podcast.

– I’m headed to the Mom 2.0 Summit next week where I get to interview Julie Clark (founder of Baby Einstein) and Jill Smokler (founder of ScaryMommy). Two powerhouse women! I’m really looking forward to it.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I’ll meet you back here on Monday. I miss you already.

Joy LF

Anna

Thanks for the link about Rothstein’s book on segregation. It’s fascinating (in a horrifying way) to learn how top-down segregation was.

I had actually learned a little bit about this when we lived in a small southern (not deep-southern) town. At first, I was mystified about why there were no playgrounds, sports fields, public swimming pools, public library, etc., in the older parts of town, despite it being a beautifully planned town with every other civic advantage you could think of. Those things existed in the brand-new suburbs, but nowhere in the old town core.

Then we started hearing bits of rumors from old-timers, and eventually they were confirmed by a long feature in the local paper: once our town had all those things, but when desegregation was ordered, they were all ripped out and demolished. For instance, the firemen, who owned and operated the town pool, filled it with rubble and concrete rather than permit racial pollution, as they saw it. The town also threatened for a while to close down all the public schools.

But one of the most fascinating and heartening things we learned from our neighbors and the article in the local paper is that, for the most part, the kids themselves – whose parents and teachers were so concerned to prevent racial mingling – had cross-racial friendships they cared about, and kept playing pick-ups sports, etc., together, despite official opposition. In our neighborhood, even among the elderly couples, there were more marriages that were interracial than not.

Our neighborhood had many problems, but racial prejudice actually wasn’t one of them. This always puzzled me somewhat, given the racist history of the town, but maybe it makes sense if that racism was more imposed from on high, rather than born out of the hearts of local citizens.

Nicolette

Thanks for the link to the 2007 post about parenting and cochlear implants! I’m a grad student in Speech-Language Pathology specializing in D/HH so I’m always interested in the topic.
Love your blog, especially as a new mom. Happy weekend!